Still, despite all these clues – and the fairly major hint dropped by main villain Foxx about the Sinister Six plans that have been going on – director Marc Webb and his production team have mostly avoided any straightforward answers about the mysteries introduced in the first film. Now, in an interview with I Am Rogue, co-writer Alex Kurtzman discussed whether or not the questions raised in the mid-credits scene would be addressed.

The main thrust of the interview concerned the decision to include (SPOILER ALERT!) Khan as the villain in Star Trek Into Darkness, but when asked about similar decisions for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Kurtzman said:

“Well, it’s interesting because the first movie asks all these questions and what I loved about it in so many ways is that it didn’t answer them. So part of what we were drawn to and intrigued by was wanting to know the answers to a lot of those questions. So the villains emerge from the a lot of unanswered questions at the end of that movie and none of them are random at all, they are all tied together by a theme, an idea, and I think they come from our curiosity about what was going on in the life of Peter Parker and his parents.”

Is this an unofficial confirmation that Chris Cooper’s Norman Osborn really does become the Green Goblin? Or perhaps the villain skips a generation, seeing Norman’s hipster playboy son Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) become the Goblin? And where does this leave the other main plot thread still left dangling – that of the true story of Peter Parker’s parent Richard and Mary Parker (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidz)?

Fans of the first film know that Richard and Mary were last seen hurrying out of the city, presumably going on the run due to something Richard had been working on. They dropped young Peter off with Richard’s brother Ben and his wife May (Martin Sheen and Sally Field). A newspaper article glimpsed at one point in the film seemed to confirm that the two had died – but that never felt conclusive, and in the mid-credits scene, the now-imprisoned Dr. Curt Connors told that shadowy figure (played by character actor Michael Massee) that he did not tell Peter the truth about his father.

It felt like your basic sequel bait at the time – which it was, of course – but Kurtzman’s assurances that none of these mysteries were just randomly included point toward some kind of long-term story idea that will eventually give us more information about Peter’s parents.

Do you have any theories about the mystery behind Peter’s parents? Let us know in the comments.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens in U.S. theaters on May 2nd, 2014, followed by The Amazing Spider-Man 3 on June 10th, 2016 and The Amazing Spider-Man 4 – which may not be a straightforward Spider-Man sequel – on May 4th, 2018.